Mark Reviews Movies: SPIDERHEAD

Spiderhead, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 16, 2022

Spiderhead almost has something to say about its frightening premise, but just when the time arrives to confront the ideas it has presented, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick's screenplay punts. Until that point, the movie is an intriguing and occasionally unsettling examination of ethical and pharmaceutical overreach, but without some sense of deeper purpose, director Joseph Kosinski's goes nowhere but toward some generic standoffs, fights, and chases.

Those don't last too long, at least, but that only adds to the disappointment. There's a lot of potential here, thanks to a clever setup and some solid performances, but it all adds up to a brief, tonally awkward act of deflection.

The story, based on George Saunders' short story "Escape from Spiderhead," takes place in the near future, at a prison/research facility on a remote island somewhere in the world. The place is overseen by Steve Abnesti (Chris Hemsworth), who offers a lot more comforts and freedoms to the inmates of this place than they would have received in the general population of an ordinary prison. That's the allure of this program, which draws prisoners like Jeff (Miles Teller) into the fold.

He's a man filled with remorse for a deadly drunk-driving accident. There's a bit of evasion here in the way our obvious heroes—Jeff and Lizzy (Jurnee Smollett), who shares a mutual affection for him—aren't guilty of the sorts of crimes that might get us questioning if Abnesti's methods are a possibly justified form of punishment. Of course, these two don't deserve what happens to them, because they're regretful and repentant.

A deeper question, though, is whether or not we might excuse or look the other way if, say, one of these protagonists—as some of the prisoners in the facility definitely have—committed murder. Could we see Abnesti's argument for experimenting on such person or exclusively on people who have committed such crimes?

That's beside the point, one supposes, because the story, which involves Abnesti using these prisoners to test various drugs before they're put out on the market, is more a psychological game of manipulation and control. Each of the inmates, who get to more or less freely wander the complex—filled with food and games and private sleeping quarters for each resident—whenever they're not participating in a drug trial, has a device attached to the lower back.

Abnesti and his assistant Mark (Mark Paguio) fill the electronic pack with different drugs undergoing this confined trial, and with some swipes on his cellphone, Abnesti can adjust the dosage of each pharmaceutical—with the inmate's verbal consent. One drug can generate the hormones that create lust and maybe even love. A different one makes Jeff see a beautiful field instead of a scene of industrial ugliness. Another encourages the brain's verbal center, and the worst of them creates a sense of agitation that results in unbearable pain.

There's not much by way of plot here, which is a benefit to this material. Most of that plotting involves Jeff, who begins to question if Abnesti is as honest as he appears, trying to uncover the truth of this place, and it's kind of meaningless in the realm of morality and ethics. Whether it's some unseen board or just Abnesti himself doing these experiments, they're still exploitative and almost certainly not for "the greater good," as the man-in-charge constantly asserts. What good, after all, can come of a drug that makes Jeff feel as if he'd rather set himself on fire than feel that kind of mental distress?

No, the reason this material intrigues—enough to sidestep some shallow and undercooked moral questions and ethical concerns about this process—is how it becomes a kind of tug-of-war of power between Abnesti and Jeff. It helps that the former is a uniquely sinister figure, who puts on a convincing air of amiability and generosity, even as he's in the process of chemically manipulating people's emotions and other mental processes.

Hemsworth, of course, is an actor of undeniable charm, and here, he shows a real intelligence, too—not only in convincing us of Abnesti's skills, but also in the particular ways the actor exploits and subverts his charisma. In Hemsworth's performance, there's a sense of a man overcompensating for his own pain and insecurities (We don't learn much about Abnesti, except that his father abandoned him at a young age, but that's all we actually need to know), and it's both pathetic and frightening.

Teller is fine, too, although there's not much for the actor to do but to be curious, internally tormented, and basically decent, but he's a grounded, self-aware sparring partner for Hemsworth's more complex character. Smollett seems to have little to do, save for being the secret love interest and, later, someone in need of rescuing, but she has one scene of such regret-filled despair that it's too bad the screenplay couldn't find a more natural way to incorporate her character into this story.

Despite some shortcomings in developing the underlying ideas here, Spiderhead starts to work as a study of control and at least one complicated character. It's fascinating and promising enough, indeed, that the movie's sudden slide into action, punctuated by uncharacteristic humor and driven by a peppy '80s pop soundtrack, comes across as an unfortunate betrayal of what the movie could have been.

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